the { buckblogs :here }: Method visibility in Ruby

the { buckblogs :here }: Method visibility in Ruby:

The difference between protected and private is very subtle, as you can see, which explains why protected is rarely used by most Rubyists. If it is used at all, it is generally as a convention, to document methods that are internal to the class, but which lie closer to the public interface than others. In Rails, for instance, you might declare your controller filter methods and model validation methods as “protected” (because the framework will call those methods) and reserve the “private” designation for those methods that are only ever called from within your own model or controller code.

Full article: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/2/23/method-visibility-i...